From ‘Ahmed the Japanese’ to ‘Sinwar’s Flood’: A Tale of Torment and a River of Graves
The cemetery caretaker was kind and friendly. Perhaps he was glad that those whose graves he tended had not slipped into total oblivion, that someone still visited or asked about them. He led me through Beirut’s Cemetery of the Martyrs of the Palestinian Revolution. Many names stopped me, including Balqis, the wife of poet Nizar Qabbani, killed in a bombing at the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut. Lines from his searing elegy adorned her grave. Chance sometimes decides destinies. Stories can begin with an unintended spark. Here are two such coincidences.
